Well I hope this thread doesn't get too confusing...
Kay Ramme - Sun Germany - Hamburg wrote:
Hi Mathias,
Mathias Bauer wrote:
Hi,
the discussion started by Ingrid ended in several sub threads and I
think it's time to try to get the essentials collected.
Yes.
- Some project leads want to reduce the very strong separation between
users and contributors.
Obviously I am one of these. This separation is artificial and
(completely) unnecessary, IMHO.
hmmmm...I am in favor of this as long as "users" don't get techno jargon
thrown in their faces. But I think this can be accomplished.
- OTOH there are concerns that the majority of people interested in OOo
are "pure" users and will stay so and they might get bored by content
more centred on contributors.
As mentioned elsewhere, the OOo portal is _not_ only for end-users
(which we may better call consumers), but has to reflect the interests
of _all_ stakeholders, including the native lang. and accepted projects.
I totally agree with this statement/assessment. www.openoffice.org is
indeed a portal, and must serve many purposes.
- There is some demand that the application links on the start page
should point to project pages addressing both users and contributors. As
a compromise the current pages could link to the project pages. The
motivation was that the current project navigation is awkward and people
might never find e.g. the Calc project page. My comment: It should be
clear that we are not talking about the current project pages when we
ask for more direct links, they will of course need a redesign.
I think your comment applies to most project pages, project leads are
asked to tune their pages ...
- We should point to URE and SDK also. My comment: have a look at the
Mozilla page ("Other Mozilla Software"). Of course we need new pages for
both products then.
The problem with Mozilla is, that it has too many home pages, at least
www.mozilla.org
www.mozilla.com
This IS true and I do find this very confusing about Mozilla (so let's
not use that project as one to emulate frankly). I think what Mathias is
suggesting is to have "links" from the home page to ALL things we
consider "products". So what if URE and SDK don't make sense to some
visitors, to others it will.
and may be
www.mozillazine.org
wiki.mozilla.org
While providing links to the URE/SDK as done by www.mozilla.org under
"Other Mozilla Software" would be fine with me.
IMHO www.mozilla.com is more pretty than www.mozilla.org and still
offers at least three products respectively categories (Firefox,
Thunderbird, add-ons). Comparing e.g. Writer to Firefox and Calc to
Thunderbird wouldn't hold, as we basically offer all applications
(components) as one single download only.
My personal summary of this would be:
- Let's agree to have links to the "other products" URE and SDK
somewhere on the home page. New pages have to be created before.
Agreed.
Yes..I don't see why they couldn't go with the other icons...maybe a
different "look"?
- Let's add a link from the marketing pages of the applications to the
project pages as soon as they are redesigned to address not only
developers.
That would be at least a start ...
Besides that I think we should also talk about the "Projects" link in
the navigation bar. IMHO the "categories" page is one step too much and
we should start with the "Accepted projects" page immediately - it also
has links to the other categories and the NL projects are linked
directly from the home page anyway.
We should do that.
Yes, this is exactly what I was thinking of doing! There's no reason
this couldn't be done. Also, I really find the differentiation between
the different categorizations of projects confusing...maybe we can deal
with that in some way. I don't have any good ideas at present.
We also need some structure in the project list and perhaps at least the
projects "External" and "Utilities" should be removed as they are a
project only in CVS but not projects in the meaning of a group of people
working on them.
Agreed. The page also needs to be updated, AFAIK Dieter is not the
L10N lead anymore.
Another point I would like to rise: could we have a more prominent link
to the "contribute" page, perhaps equally in visibility and size to the
"get OOo" or the "Native Language" button?
Another worthwhile suggestion!
Ciao,
Mathias
Actually I do not know why people are so picky regarding the requested
changes.
:) I think what we should concentrate on is assisting navigation and
clarity at the moment. Prettiness can come after we get general
organization fixed.
Even if the project pages are not too pretty, neither are the
marketing etc. pages, and basically there is no risk to experiment a
little. And while we are on it, does anybody think that any visitor is
going to visit one of the "component" pages (Writer, Impress, Draw,
Calc, ...) twice? These pages are basically dead-ends.
Regards
Kay
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CSU, Chico
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